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123 of the world’s best & brightest marketersshare their top social media marketing tools for 2018

When we set out to write a post on the top social media marketing tools
available in 2018, we thought that it would be almost impossible to test out every one of the best tools
on the market.

With that in mind, we decided instead to ask some of the best social media
marketers in the world, which tools they use, and the answers that we got were very surprising.

In fact, the “tool” that got the most votes isn’t necessarily known as a social
media marketing tool at all. It’s almost a Swiss army knife, because its got so many uses and combines
data from all of the different platforms and traffic sources. Yes the tool that just over half of our
experts chose as their number one tool for social media marketing, is Google Analytics.

Another surprise was in the number of people who chose Facebook Live as one of their go-to marketing
tools. Facebook is advocating for video more often, and one of the last places on the platform where
businesses can still benefit from organic reach is through Facebook live.

Bonus: Do you want to create social media posts that capture more attention? Use our huge list of social media post templates and ideas, to create content that your audience loves and get more customers from your social media profiles. Download the big book of “done for you” post ideas and ready to use templates here.

Of the "actual" social media marketing tools on the list, the highest rated was Buzzsumo. Which isn't much of a surprise when you consider that the tool has so many uses, and can really give you a pulse of what's going on in your niche, by seeing what kind of posts are being shared and who is sharing them. As well as that, you can identify influencers to build relationships with in the hope of amplifying your content and/or your business.

Some of our experts have used Facebook live to grow their social following by massive numbers. Going live
during meetings, interviews and any other time that it’s worth. Our friend Billy Gene even goes live to
answer marketing questions, when he’s getting his weekly haircut in the BGIM office! Youtube also offers the opportunity to go live and broadcast to your audience, but surprisingly that didn't get many mentions.

The tools available today to help you market your business on social media are extremely powerful. There
are tools that save massive amounts of time by allowing you to schedule posts. There are tools that can
curate relevant content for you to review and share with your audience. There are tools that can help
you identify influencers to share your own content with. In the fast paced environment that is the
modern workday, each tool that our experts mentioned is useful, and each tool mentioned is extremely
powerful in its own right.

So with all that said, let’s get into into it and learn which tools the smartest marketers in the room
(and probably the world) are using every day to grow their businesses.

Andrew Hutchinson

There are many, many digital marketing tools, all with specific purposes, but you don't want to go too crazy - master the basics first, then use others for each intent and purpose as you need it. Hootsuite is the leading social media management platform, and serves a range of uses, Google Analytics is essential in order to rationalize and understand your website performance, and BuzzSumo has become a key content companion, also able to serve various needs.

Mari Smith

Facebook is still the #1 social network in the world with 2.07 billion active users. There is no other platform that offers the incredibly granular ad targeting capabilities. Despite the recent uproar in the media over Mark Zuckerberg’s changes to the news feed ranking algorithm, savvy marketers need to give priority to Facebook Live + Facebook Ads in their business growth plans this year. Live video gets six times the engagement than regular videos. And, although organic reach has steadily declined for all business Page post types since 2012, the smartest marketers make time to understand the power of Facebook’s ad products. Particularly, how even a nominal budget helps increase organic reach.

Jeff Sheehan

As far as your blog post is concerned, my number one tool by far is Nimble. As I wrote in an article for LinkedIn Publisher titled, My #1 Tool For Staying Organized, it's amazing! No wonder Mark Cuban is an investor in the company.

My greatest regret is not signing up for it several years ago when Jon Ferrara, the CEO, initially contacted me about working with him. No wonder

The benefits I've realized from it include:

1)It Saves Me Time On Data Entry
2)The Browser Plug-in Allows Me To Use It Where I Work
3)Nimble Enriches My Contacts with Social and Business Data
4) It Allows Me To Effectively Segment My Contacts
5)Group Messaging with a Personal Touch Makes My Outreaches More Successful
6)Gmail Templates, Tracking and Analytics Give Me The Insights I Need
7)Smart Mobile Calendar with Contact Insights Helps Me On The Go
8)Nimble’s Twitter List Import Allows Me To Prospect Smarter

Glen Gilmore

I always turn to the news before I start my content sharing so that I don't have a communication disconnect depending on what might be happening in the world. The BBC app is actually my first 'social media tool' of the day. As I review the news I can share relevant stories to various accounts.

I also recommend making as many of your daily activities digital, so that that you can optimize your time and leverage cost-free tools. For example, though I still get a home delivery of the NY Times and WSJ, I begin the morning scanning their lead stories on their apps so that I can use their social sharing buttons to feed the beast of content curation.

I'm also a big fan of Buffer, a tool I've used for years now. It is an app that lets users schedule their content. I've always found it to be reliable and very easy to use. The reason I use it is that I devour tons of content throughout the day and, as I do, I am able to pace content to a variety of accounts, some my own and others I manage for others, each with its own best time zones.

The advantage of using a tool such as Buffer is that it enables you to pace your content so that when you discover a bounty of rich content you don't have to overwhelm community in a single burst and you can also target more effectively different time zones, which is important when you are working for global clients. Where in the world are you trying to connect with and when are they most likely to be viewing content are questions a good content and community manager should always be asking. Buffer lets you achieve those goals.

A word of caution: while it's helpful to leverage tools to pace and target content, it should never be an excuse for not actively listening and engaging. Community first, tools second.

Neal Schaffer

I believe that marketers need to go back to the basics with fewer social media tools and use them well with purpose. The first one is the most important one: Google Analytics. It's not just about managing conversion funnels inside Google Analytics but it's also a great way to learn what content generates what quality of visitors from which social network. From there use BuzzSumo to better investigate content to create, curate, and which influencers to have on your radar. Finally, every social media marketer needs an awesome social media dashboard, and the best one on this list that I have used for years is Sprout Social.

Michael Brito

Crimson Hexagon
Data-driven marketing has been discussed by industry pundits for years. In 2018, it must become a reality and it’ll put great distance from the brand leaders from the challengers. Crimson Hexagon allows marketers to build very targeted audience listening panels using Boolean queries in order to understand conversations online. The data goes as far back as 2008 which is ideal for more research-driven programs. Additionally, they allow you to upload specific groups or segments of people for real-time analysis. These audiences can include groups of influencers or self-identified audiences like CIOs, developers, engineers or millennials in New York interested in film and electronic dance music.

Dynamic Signal
The Future of Work is evolving exponentially; and the workforce is more diverse than ever before. Brands must learn how to engage employees and also activate them to be external brand advocates. Dynamic Signal is one of my platforms because it does both. Their robust tools allow disparate teams to communicate with each other and share internal news. More sophisticated brands are using the platform to activate teams to engage externally with customers, partners, influencers and even the media. In my next book, Participation Marketing, I talk in great detail about how an engaged workforce can blossom into brand storytellers in order to reach new audiences and influence the conversation. I also explore Dynamic Signal and its functionality in great detail.

Dr. Nancy Richmond

Social Media takes time and being organized is the key to success. I use Hootsuite to help schedule my posts and to create a content strategy. If you are more organized with social media you can manage your time better and create more engagement with your posts. Be strategic. Time is precious. Use it well.

Lilach Bullock

It hasn't been easy picking only 3 tools, but these 3 are definitely some of my favourites and the ones I use most often.

Agorapulse is my favourite when it comes to social media management, as well as for scheduling social media updates; I love the interface and the fact that I have so many different social media scheduling options, so I don't have to use 2 separate tools, one for managing and one for scheduling.

As for Buzzsumo, I use it a lot for content research. There aren't many tools that do what Buzzsumo does, and least not as well. It helps me find out what type of content people like and what makes them share on social media.

And finally, there's Quuu, which is one of the top tools I use for content amplification. It takes minutes and it generates impressive amounts of quality shares every time.

Shane Barker

Buffer is an amazing social media management platform that has made my life so much easier! It allows you to schedule your posts on all your social media accounts. I can simply set the dates and times when I want my posts to go live and it does the rest. It allows me to stick to a posting schedule which is so important if you want to grow your followers organically.
So I’m able to post content consistently, even if I’m not actually available at the time. I create the content earlier when I have enough time, and schedule the posts for later. And it even allows me to manage multiple accounts. Which is great if you’re managing client portfolios.

Quuu is another favorite of mine, which provides me personally reviewed and curated content suggestions. So I don’t need to rack my brain or spend loads of time to come up with something interesting and relevant.
All I need to do is select the categories I’m interested in, and it keeps sending me suggestions on them. The best part is that, it can be integrated with Buffer. So the entire process of content creation to posting can essentially remain on auto-pilot. Ingenious, right?

If you’re trying to create a content strategy for your campaigns, BuzzSumo is the tool I would strongly recommend. It has a robust analytics function that helps you identify the content that will work best for you. Depending on your industry, it helps you uncover trends and insights into what people are interested in.
And it even helps you identify and connect with relevant influencers for your campaigns. You can manage your campaigns efficiently, track performance, and make any improvements needed too. It’s like the one-stop-shop for all your content marketing needs.

Buffer because it allows you to schedule posts at times that make sense for your audience, and it connects with other tools, like Bulk.ly and many others.

Quuu and Feed.ly because they allow you to collect and quickly share relevant content to your tribe.

Google Analytics because your goal should always be to use social media to drive people to your website, and Google Analytics lets you know which tactics are working. Plus, it's free.

Sprout Social, if you have a team, a budget, and need to keep track of who is reponding and need analytics and reporting. Plus, it helps with reporting and engagement. You can also use Hootsuite for a cheaper version (if less elegant), and Tweetdeck for a solopreneur.

Facebook Ads are such a great tool. In addition to the obvious boost in reach, they allow you to pinpoint target your audience by interests, demographics and behaviors. You can use this to test a new idea and see if it appeals to your target audience, and refine that audience before spending more money.

You don't mention it, but I love, love, love Canva to help create social media headers, graphics, logos and more. It makes you look very professional with a small budget.

These tools offer a full range of content curation, marketing automation, and analysis that enable a seamless integration of insights and resources to provide value for my clients. The combination of these tools also enables a collaborative environment for me to work with various levels of the team.

Kevan Lee

I think a combination of Buffer and Google Analytics can be really powerful for a marketing team because you get the flexibility and organization of a complete social media management platform (Buffer) with the power and data of on-page analytics (GA). Together, both products let you see the impact that your social media is having on traffic, goals, and revenue. All it takes is some UTMs, tracking, and filtering, then voila !

Chris Makara

The reason I recommend both Buffer + Bulkly is that Bulkly will automatically drip content into your Buffer account for you.

Buffer is a great tool for scheduling updates across your various social accounts.

And Bulkly allows you to stretch your evergreen blog content (and evergreen status updates) by recycling them automatically into your Buffer account based on the drip schedule you set.

Essentially, Bulkly is an extra layer of efficiency on top of your Buffer account. You can do many things like set start and stop schedules, organize updates into groups, send updates to some or all social accounts, assign hashtags based on the social channel and more.

Madalyn Sklar

I'm an advocate for livestream video and my preferred platform is Facebook Live. It's a great way to get seen in a completely transparent way. Each week after I host my #TwitterSmarter and #SocialROI chats, I move the conversation over to Facebook Live. My community loves it. They get the opportunity to interact with the guest and each other. I think we are going to see Facebook Live grow to new heights in 2018.

Samantha Kelly

I recommend these tools as I don't schedule much but if I do I need reliable software where I can also add a team to manage and add to. Design Wizard is Irish so I like to support Irish businesses and you can't beat Google analytics for seeing where traffic is coming from so that you can tweak your campaigns accordingly

Gini Dietrich

CoSchedule, with the ability to plan your editorial calendar, schedule your social media calendar, work on projects as a team, integrate with email, and soon other fun things, is the only tool you need in 2018. When you combine it with Google Analytics, you'll have a robust tool for your content marketing needs.

Peter Caputa IV

I still spend most of my social media time on Twitter. I use the site when I'm on my laptop and the app on my phone. I was originally attracted to Twitter because there are no barriers to initiating a dialog with any user, whereas Linkedin and Facebook require users to pay or wait for an accepted connection request. Also, since everything is public and it's possible to link to content, it's a great way to drive traffic to our content. Also, ever since Twitter started surfacing content that's popular in my network, I now spend more time reading content I discover on the service.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by everything you're 'supposed' to be doing on social media. It's even easier to let the very tools meant to make your life easier, make it harder. I like to keep my tool stack to a minimum, and this true both for my personal brand as well as the B2B social-media marketing I do.

Buffer (or Hootsuite) makes a great foundation. Hiplay for evergreen content I want to post over and over. Quuu and QuuuPromote for content curation and especially promotion that doesn't look heavy-handed. Tweetdeck for Twitter chats. Bitly for tracking (or EffingAmazing) to build UTMs. Buzzsumo for what's trending. And Google Analytics to keep it all straight.

Of course, you can't fake — nor automate — humanity. For engagement, I use a keyboard.

Brian Carter

I would also recommend the suite of tools in the Facebook ad platform, like Audience Insights and the Creative Hub. For our clients, Facebook and Instagram are of preeminent importance. Twitter has declined in importance and effectiveness remarkably for all of our clients and almost every business in my keynote speech audiences. It's not useful to about social media in terms that only make sense on Twitter. Even though that's how social media was initially defined back in 2007, the paradigm and center has shifted to Facebook and Instagram. The tools that get us and our clients the biggest business results are Facebook-oriented, not Twitter-oriented. Buzzsumo has great tools for Facebook discovery (indeed for 4-5 of the biggest social networks, but it's one of the only ones that can help you with Facebook). And no one has some of Facebook's data but Facebook, so you have to use Audience Insights. And Audience Insights has consumer purchase data (from the three largest consumer databases in the U.S.) you can't get anywhere else without spending $10's of thousands of dollars, so you can't afford to miss it.

Ian Anderson Gray

As a total tool addict, I found it really difficult to choose just 3 tools. But I chose tools with 'super powers' - ones that are able to do the job of many tools in one. Agora Pulse is my go to social media management tool. It allows me to monitor mentions, comments and keywords across all my social channels. But more importantly, engage with each one and get down to inbox zero very quickly. Businesses with a growing social presence need to keep on top of their social empire, and Agora Pulse is the most efficient, powerful and cost effective tool I've found that does all this. It also has a new feature that allows you to schedule repeating content - a little like Edgar. I'm also in love with the second tool, Buzzsumo. The main feature allows me to find which content is being shared the most for a particular phrase. But there are loads more features hidden inside Buzzsumo, such as a content analyzer, a question tool, and a Facebook post analyzer. These features are going to be vital for businesses who want to create killer content on their blogs or social channels that reaches their audience and gets shared. Finally, I've chosen Brand24 which is a social media brand monitoring tool. It's so important to listen to conversations about your brand and your competitors on social and the web. With Brand24, you're able to be alerted when your brand is mentioned and get a 'storm alert' when there is high activity (which could be a good or bad thing!) I really wanted to mention more than 3, because a visual tool is going to be vital. Creating visually appealing images for blogs, videos and social posts is more important than ever. I'd highly recommend Design Wizard for that - it's one of the most intuitive visual tools I've used and so many photos and visual elements that I've not seen anywhere else. For Twitter, I am a big fan of ManageFlitter- just to manage my followers and friends and grow my audience. All businesses need to be using Google Analytics too! I'm also a massive fan of Friends+Me, Tailwind (for Pinterest and Instagram), IFTTT, Zapier, Feedly and Active Campaign. I did say I was a tool addict, didn't I?!

Jason Squires

HootSuite is a great time saver, allowing you to schedule your posts in advance, and gives you an overall view of your social media profiles.

ManageFlitter also has a scheduling option, although the power with this tool is in finding relevant Twitter accounts to follow and interact with (hint: your competitors followers!).

BuzzSumo is another incredible tool which effortlessly finds relevant content across the web, which has already shown to be popular on social media... Giving you share-worthy articles for you to post to your accounts. What's not to love!

Chad Pollitt

I've decidedly taken a different approach than what I believe most will. While I don't know all of the bells and whistles for each solution mentioned, I do know that Hootsuite owns AdEspresso - it's paid social media DSP for Facebook and Instagram. To dominate in social media this year will require a robust paid component. As a result, Hootsuite, or any of the other solutions that offer a paid solution, would be an excellent choice to dominate social media marketing.

Rick Ramos

I think both Hootsuite and Buffer are the leading platforms to manage and schedule your social media posts. Between the two, I think they both have their unique advantages. I love the UI and simplicity of Buffer but the power of Hootsuite. Regarding Google Alaytics, all the social media likes are nice but if you aren't converting your traffic to sales, leads, or whatever you are trying to accomplish, it's all for nothing.

Mandy Edwards

Sprout Social is your all-in-one program. It's all you need. You can schedule, publish, manage, engage, track, and more - everything from one place. Any marketer or business owner could split their time over multiple programs but for time efficiency (and not to mention cost savings), why wouldn't you just use one robust program that provides you all the tools with a high-level of professionalism and customer service? Couple that with Google Analytics to track what social platforms are directing traffic to your website and you have all you need to effective social media marketing.

Mike Allton

When it comes to overall social media management, there's no better tool than Agorapulse. The app includes support for all of the major networks, and the absolute best means for monitoring and listening to your audience.
Agorapulse is also great for maintaining consistent activity across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram profiles.

Tailwind then picks up from there and provides a solid tool for growing a Pinterest profile. From content discovery & distribution through Tribes, to deep analysis of pins and boards, Tailwind is the essential Pinterest tool.

Finally, Buzzsumo is a tremendous tool for analyzing both you own content, and your competitors. No other platform can provide the same level of insight into which pieces of content are resonating on social channels.

Keri Jaehnig

Of the tool choices provided, I recommended three that I use myself and offer value toward any social media marketing strategy. Sprout Social offers scheduling, editorial calendar, draft posts, very plush reporting, keyword monitoring, saved searches, follower clean-up, and more. Plus, it connects with other tools and functions you use or absolutely need! Like Feedly, also recommended here, which is terrific for curating awesome content to share on social channels.

Video content is the most powerful, as it allows an audience to connect in a personal way. Facebook Live is a great tool to maximize visibility on the 'Big Blue'. Facebook Live video can be re-shared and embedded into web pages which allows for awesome re-purposing of great social content. Plus, there are more features and related tools released all the time, which makes Facebook Live video....FUN !!

Peter Trapasso

Sprinklr is THE enterprise-level social media management tool. Buffer is great for SMBs, I use it daily myself. Google Analytics provides the data you need to derive good insights about what is working in your social strategy.

Adel de Meyer

Nimble is a must have CRM that follows you wherever you go while browsing so you can immediately save and see all contact information pulled through from the database.

Facebook Live is a must use moving forward for all pages as Facebook clearly stated they will start to favour live-streaming content in the timeline feeds. Out with the article links shares and in with the streams.

Agora Pulse is a great one stop shop to manage your brand mentions, social activity and analytics.

Ryan Biddulph

Each tool helps you save time and energy while assisting you in making the greatest impact in your niche. The tools simply help you share value and build bonds in the right spots with the right people while removing the logistical leg work that often trips people up with their social media campaigns.

Adam Connell

Sendible - This is my go-to social media management tool. It's got the most robust social inbox that I've found so far. This helps me streamline my approach to managing responses to my followers - I can archive all the messages I've seen/replied to so I don't have to sift through them again. And their scheduling tool makes it easy to share my content and I don't have to keep re-scheduling content.

Tailwind - Literally the only tool I use for Pinterest marketing. Their scheduling tool ensures I've got new pins going up at the right time. Board lists simplify the sharing process and their tribes feature helps me get more shares.

Buzzsumo - There's so much to love about this. I can use it to monitor for new mentions/links, run a content analysis on my competitors or simply find the most shared content for a given topic. I can also use it to find influencers that are sharing specific pieces of content.

Andrew and Pete

We'd recommend SmarterQueue as the best social media scheduler - it's cheaper than Edgar AND has more features.
We'd also recommend linking up your Zapier account to ManyChat so that you can grow your email subscribers through your Messenger Bot (link below)
ManageFlitter is great for finding relevant people to follow and communicate proactively with.

Peter Banerjea

Manageflitter - It's an excellent tool for following people based on several parameters like location, area of expertise, role, influence, etc. It's also an awesome too for unfollowing people (manually by really fast) based on different criteria. Quuu - It's awesome for getting your posts significant traction. Far less expensive and more effective than promoting your post through paid social ads. MeetEdgar - If you want to recycle your posts, this is THE tool. It's a bit expensive but it's really easy to use and will save you hours a week. Even if you have a dedicated guy for handling social media, Edgar is a great choice.

Carlos Hidalgo

Content is key to customer engagement and create a great experience. Being able to determine the best content, distribute across multiple social channels and measure the effectiveness is key to using social media effectively.

Mark Traphagen

Buffer: The only post scheduler you should ever need. Very flexible with some cool features.

Buzzsumo: Not only analyze the social shares of your content and that of your competition, but perform tons of other analysis by topics, domains, and authors. Also love the new evergreen score that rates the longevity of post engagement.

Finally, Google Analytics (with UTM tagging all your social-shared links) to know which social brings the most valuable people to your site.

Jamie Turner

I'm a big fan of AgoraPulse, because they continue to innovate and come up with new offerings. I'm also a big fan of Brand24, mostly because their social media sentiment analysis tool is so easy to use, but also because they're from Gdansk, Poland, which has a ton of great technology companies sprouting up there (including GetResponse, ClickMeeting, Sentione, and others).

Julia Bramble

I recommend Agorapulse as it's unlike any other social media scheduling or management tool I've tried - not only does it make things super-easy on the scheduling front, but you can also customise each post or tweet to suit a specific platform - and you can schedule to every major network. It also brings all responses (including those to your Facebook ads ) into one inbox, and allows you to create a queue of content either once, or again and again (great for evergreen content that deserves a number of outings!). It also offers lots of facilities for teams and is just so user-friendly!

I recommend Design Wizard as good images and graphics are just essential in digital marketing today. Design Wizard allows us to easily create visuals that are different and eye-catching - not the same old templated images that we've seen so many people share!

I recommend BuzzSumo as an amazing research tool. I know I've only just scratched the surface of what it can do, but it allows you to easily find the most popular or shared subjects or posts, and to research the networks and the sharers. You can also search for influencers and find out what content they share and track content as it's published that contains specific keywords.

Harry Hugo

Tweet deck is good for realtime understanding of what's being said online, especially for managing multiple accounts on twitter. Whilst Bitly is good for measuring campaign effectiveness and tracking. It is also interesting to use as we can find out data on campaigns we haven't run yet.

Mike Arce

Live videos have taken over social media, and Facebook Live is a great way to engage with your audience. People watch live videos 3X longer than those that are no longer live, so Facebook prioritizes them and makes them appear higher in people's News Feed. Talk about topics that your audience is interested in, and ask them questions along the way that encourage them to comment and interact with you. You'll build a strong connection with your audience and get more exposure. If you don't already post Facebook Live videos, now is the time to start !

Buffer: I visit Buffer many times a day. I use Buffer to post on Twitter, on Instagram, and I check past analytics on Buffer. When I see a post did well, I rebuffer it and post it again. I also use Google Analytics. I recently switched to an email service which doesn't optimize the time I send my emails. Google Analytics tells me which days of the week and which times on those days people are on my site. I also use IFTTT. IFTTT saves me so much time each day that I blogged about how: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/ifttt/ IFTTT saves me time since it connects WordPress, where I blog, to the social media sites I use to promote my articles. Basically, IFTTT posts my articles for me saving me the time to promote my articles myself.

Esther Turón Perez

My three favorite tools are IFTTT, Feedly and Hootsuite. Although we need many more tools for our work, for an effective management of time these are for me essential. IFTTT with its recipes allows me to automate many processes of publication in networks. Feedly allows me to be up to date in my sector and find all the content I need to share in my networks in one place. Hootsuite Pro is perfect to program the content of my accounts, follow mentions about my brand on Twitter and teamwork. I have been using them for many years and they are still my favorite.

Andy Lambert

For us, there's no 'one size fits all' social media solution. But with these three products you can have all angles covered. ContentCal for the planning, organisation and team collaboration, Design Wizard for the content to add to your ContentCal plans and Hubspot for managing the entire customer lifecycle - analysing the effectiveness of your content, managing your community, understanding the impact of your social content on web traffic and ultimately, conversions.

Daniel Kempe

When deciding on tools that will help anybody dominate in 2018 with social media marketing, I found myself gravitating towards Buffer and MeetEdgar. At Quuu, we connect with Buffer and HubSpot to send out our content suggestions, but now, we’ve built our own scheduler (like Buffer) and content recycling tool (Like MeetEdgar) so we no longer need to use these tools at all. Now you can manage all your content, today, tomorrow and in the future from one place. We are trying to streamline your SMM productivity process in 2018.

In terms of trends, I strongly feel that video marketing is where it’s at in 2018, so creating short and useful videos for Facebook then paying to boost them is a simple win. You don’t need to spend hundreds or even thousands, just a dollar a day for each video (As the mighty Dennis Yu once said).

Tweetdeck is my go-to tool for managing general chit-chat and finding new conversations to build my following as well as meet new and interesting people. I also use Tweetdeck for Quuu's monthly Twitter chats, this ensures I never miss a tweet across the whole hour.

Using Quuu Promote, we get buckets of mentions, on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. By using Brand24 we can keep track of them all and then choose how to engage with each person mentioning us.

We've just started to experiment with a monthly podcast summing up what we did that month on our blog by using Anchor. Anchor allows the whole team to call in to the show and will handle recording for you. By the time you've finished recording, your podcast is ready to share with the world.

Lisa Kalner Williams

FollowerWonk is great for Twitter user research. Agorapulse is a super easy all-in-one social media management tool (and a great employer ;) ). Quuu is a simple way to give your content more traction on social.

Michaela Underdahl

In order to stand out from the crowd in your field, you have to be consistently working on developing your personal brand. You do so by curating and creating interesting content and engaging with people on social media. I use Buffer to share curated content and MeetEdgar for creating queues of evergreen content that was written by my team members as well as myself. Facebook Live is an amazing way to connect with your community, humanize your brand and show that you care. If you are successfull at engaging with people on social media, your network will start to grow and you will find yourself in a need of a tool like Nimble which allows you to easily create contact records with people straight from Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and then track the status and context of the relationship.

Rebecca Coleman

They are tools I use myself on a daily basis, and feel like I wouldn't want to live without ! In addition, all three have great blogs with lots of useful content that help to keep me up-to-date with the most recent social media news and developments, as well as tips and tricks.

Tom Pick

If you manage multiple Twitter accounts, TweetDeck is a godsend. It enables you to stay on top of what's happening across the accounts; post tweets from each at appropriate intervals; schedule tweets for posting minutes.hours, days, even weeks in advance; and selectively retweet key content. ManageFlitter is great for keeping your Twitter following clear of bots, inactive accounts, and other nonsense. Google Analytics provides the baseline view of what's happening on your website. It integrates with more sophisticated analytics platforms like PaveAI and Klipfolio; but you can't get the most out of those packages without having Google Analytics in place first.

Jason Acidre

Mainly for monitoring, automation and topic/influencer research and analysis - especially if you're aiming to consistently create content that will drive activity and engagement in the social web, these tools can immensely help out in taking data-driven decisions.

Muthoni Wambugu

Buffer
Buffer not only allows you to schedule posts but it also analyses how your readers and followers are interacting and responding to what you are sharing. This allows you to spot the top posts and try to replicate them. Week after week, as you track the winning posts (whether by the amount of shares/retweets, comments/replies and likes), you will get to understand the audiences from all the different social platforms you are on. This is without the deep dive into the different social platforms to analyze the numbers further. It is also a bonus that you can get to re-buffer your top performing posts.

Google Analytics
You should not build your audience on other people’s platforms as a long term plan. The simple reason is, anyone of these social platforms can close its doors or shut you down without any warning. The key is to convert your followings and readers on your social media platforms to your own site. And no better way to track this than through Google Analytics. Google Analytics will show you what social platform is sending you quality traffic. What social platform has a better lifetime value for your customer. And so much more. Through this, you can get to decide where you have absolutely nailed it in your social media efforts. And where you need to improve.

Facebook
By now, you already know Facebook is more than just a social media platform. Facebook has a robust ads manager, analytics dashboard, audience insights to say the least. Even with limited budget, you can create targeted ads to the audience that will have the likelihood of purchasing your product or service.So before investing on other tools for your business, make sure you already have a tracking system set up.

Vicki Fitch

Recurpost is an exceptional tool that is a fraction of the cost of MeetEdgar but gives you the functionality you need to continue with a constant flow of content with out having to create new content all the time. It is a huge timesaver for me and my agency and we use it on all of our clients.

Terry Ibele

Socialoomph - This tool creates a completely automated neverending queue of social updates. I use it for Twitter and LinkedIn and my traffic is now 5x from those sources. BuzzSumo Chrome Extension - I use this handy extension to instantly show the number of social engagements from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest on any page on the internet. Facebook Ads - I’ve created about two dozen one-minute videos that give practical tips to our target market. I turned these into ads and the business results have been phenomenal.

Vlad Calus

In 2018 we’ll definitely see more platforms to help you analyse and understand the data you’re operating for your marketing campaigns. Ahrefs is the best tool for me to see how our website is performing. With the changes in the algorithm on Facebook and other social media platforms, creative teams will have to focus on creating better content and this is exactly what Planable will help you to do .

Koray Camgoz

Google Analytics
No social media marketer's war chest is complete without Google Analytics (GA). Businesses often make the mistake of assuming Google Analytics exists purely to monitor web traffic but it can deliver so much more. When used wisely, GA generates powerful insights that show the direct and indirect contributions of social media activity against defined goals. It's an invaluable tool.

Facebook Live
We've had tremendous success with Facebook Live over the past twelve months. It's a brilliant, cost-free way to engage directly with audiences. We've used it to livestream events and reveal awards shortlists but it can work for product launches or sharing business success stories. Like any new channel, it's often a case of trail and error but don't be afraid to fail. You might not nail it first time round but with a bit of a practice, it can deliver terrific results. The latest update to Facebook's algorithm gives precedence to FB Live, so there's never been a better time to consider it for your business.

Minuca Elena

I like Buffer because I can use it to schedule posts for all major social channels. Most scheduling tools do not offer an option to schedule pins. Buffer does. With Buffer you can also schedule posts to share them on Facebook groups, not only on your personal profile. I prefer a tool that gives me all the options that I need so I don't have to use different tools for each social network.

Free or cheap and when you know how to use them they can give you almost every statistic you need. Especially a fan of ifttt for automation and analytics for comparison between different traffic channels.

I’m a big fan of tools that can save me time and automate most of the digital marketing processes.Here are several tools that I’m using on a daily basis, with great results:

BuzzSumo is a great tool to research for content that our readers would love to read and then share with their peers (so the post may become viral and drive traffic on autopilot). I spend some time to research the perfect hashtags that are popular and match my article. More info on this on:
https://monetize.info/perfect-hashtags/

After I created a great piece of content I use a program like Missinglettr, Buffer, PostPlanner or Hootsuite to share automatically the article on all my social media accounts at given intervals.

After the article started to get some traction I use Google Analytics to track the way my readers interact with the content.

I'm a big Twitter fan as most of my audience is there and I'm getting huge traffic. ManageFlitter does a great job at keeping your Twitter account in good shape. Also you have a clear picture on how your Twitter account performs and you can easily unfollow bots or people that unfollowed you. That's why I recommend it to anyone which is serious about Twitter marketing.

In closing I'd like to add that these tools can help you achieve better results on social media marketing but don't forget that the focus should be on creating quality and interesting content.

Ashley Faulkes

I like to keep it simple when it comes to social media automation, but that does not mean that I don't use tools. I automate the things that make sense, but still leave space and time for interaction. Tweetdeck helps me keep a handle on what is going on on Twitter, as well as being able to answer any tweets that mention me (it's all about the conversation, right?).

But, you also need to make sure that you are curating and sharing interesting information, which is where tools like Buzzsumo and Quuu (is that the right amount of u's?) come in. Give them a shot !

Last, but certainly not least, you should be tracking how things are going, which is where Google Analytics comes in. Sure, there are other tools that dive even deeper, but for me (someone who focuses more on websites and SEO) this is my go to tool.

Michael Babcock

These are the tools that I use and they help me with adding automation to my social networks. Not only that, but they also assist me with coming up with new content to promote. Who has time to look stuff up any more? ;)

Cian Corbett

I use different tools for specific tasks - I find Buffer is great for my personal Social Media posts to post things at optimal times. As an agency we find Sprout Social to be a critical element of reporting and moderating social channels for clients.

Dennis Yu

Because of Facebook's recent changes, the posts that appears the most organic and drives the highest engagement will win. Thus, Quuu (especially Quuu Promote) generates tons of mentions via Twitter and Facebook's own ads platform serves us well, naturally.

Third party tools like to claim there is no algorithmic penalty for posting through them instead of natively. But there are so many factors that bias any attempt at objective research.

Then again, people can say it's not the tool, but the user. Certainly people who are pre-dispositioned to automation are going to be posting more frequently, posting lower quality content (you have only so many good posts), and less likely to be human.

We've used most of the tools on this list-- any of them will drive you success if you have your content organized properly into a WHY/HOW/WHAT funnel sequence.

And likewise, if you have horrible content, using the best tools in the world won't matter one bit.

Mike King

These are the primary social tools we're using at UndergroundHiphop.com. We like CoSchedule for managing our content calendar and pushing the posts out to social. We like HootSuite for managing social postings that are not a direct result of our editorial content. We like Google Analytics to determine the performance of our content.

Stephen Ryan

First up is Google Analytics, without knowing who is coming to your site and what pages they are looking at then you are wasting your time doing any digital marketing. The same applies to using any social platforms without using the analytics that they provide with them. At all times understand who your customers are and what they want.

Design Wizard makes life easier and as a marketeer with no design experience then that is a great tool to have.

With the current changes taking place on the Facebook Newsfeed you will need to start using the tool that facebook will give preference to i.e. Facebook live. In the same way Twitter was always strong for marketing in the moment, Facebook will want to do the same but in a visual context. They are also going to focus on getting people to watch via a specific facebook watch app which will give suggested videos based on your likes.

These are the ones we have found most useful. Predominantly most bookings we receive from interactive online media, come from Linkedin. People following posts and connections.

Facebook Live and Instagram Live do create a great connection with followers directly. People who are generally interested in what we do already.

Hubspot is great for linking in with those who have been through the website and expressed interest as is Google Analytics.

Design Wizard is a fantastic tool and it is cost effective. As a business that has photoshop within daily practice. It is lumpy and a little convoluted for preparing artwork and high quality, low effort posts. Design wizard does that for us in spades. It also comes with all of the social media formats pre loaded which makes life a whole lot easier than searching through formats and Google for information.

Donal Cahalane

In this year of mass consumption and attention overload, companies need to focus their marketing efforts very tightly on niches, these tools will allow this to happen in an organised and deliberate way.

Fabrice Briatte

I use Tweet Deck to follow competitors, to get news about specific themes and to know what key marketing people post. I use mainly Hootsuite to automate blog posts on Twitter,LlinkedIn and Facebook. Finally, Crowdfire helps me to manage my targeted Twitter followers. Since images worth 1,000 words and videos worth 1,000,000 words, I will use Canva and Animaker more and more in 2018.

Brandon Shaw

Sprinklr and Spredfast have all the tools a social team needs to succeed. Ranging from an assortment of community management tools, in-depth reporting and the ease of finding user-generated content -- our team really enjoys both tools.

Chuck Bankoff

I recommend Feedly because it is a terrific way to aggregate content on specific subjects. We can have feeds for our Education clients, Our Glass & Mirror clients, and of course for our own Digital Marketing services. HubSpot and Hootsuite are just great for scheduling content.

Susan Tatum

I don't have a strong feeling about these tools. My specialty is LinkedIn and I find that too much reliance on automation can be a mistake. In fact, these tools only scratch the surface of what LinkedIn offers as a communication channel for marketers. Your best results from LinkedIn are going to come from manual efforts. (These days I am also much more involved in strategy than actual execution).

Tom Lyons

We like our picks because we can't live without them, Facebook ads platform is the backbone to our targetting, and drives tons of traffic for us at some of the best cost to conversion ratios. Bitly allow me to track links we use in multiple places, but more importantly when we create links with good keywords, UTM tags etc, they need to shortened, bitly does a great making that super easy. Hoot suite just saves us time, we use another tool called Amplifr that we love as well, same sort of thing.

Greg Fry

In order to succeed and get seen in 2018 in an ever busy Social Media world marketers need to become far more strategic. Tools like Nimble can help you find opportunities to have more relevant one to one conversations online. This is far more effective than blasting out bland messages to the masses.

Ads have become vital to get seen in the social media newsfeed. So we will need to up our adverting budget and knowledge in 2018. However, we are not talking about traditional 'buy now' ads. Social Ads require great valuable content not sales pitches. Tools like Feedly and Buzzsumo are super for businesses to identify the types of content that are gaining traction online. So we need great content, but we also need to activate and amplify that content to the right audience online.

Vera Pell

For a digital marketing expert (who is a bit OCD!) it can be very daunting for me and my team to stay on top of all my company's tasks and track them in a cohesive manner. Oh and then duplicate those tasks for multiple clients !

Hootsuite allows me to see all of my social media posts at one time on all the Dakotah platforms and my clients platforms. Scheduling, analytics and monitoring in one tool. It's just all inclusive. I've used it for years !

Google Analytics is an awesome visual I use to show my clients how their website is doing and the data is on all of my client reports. It can sell a potential customer by quickly seeing how their site is doing and how it can be improved.

IFTTT is an easy automation tool for all those little things (and some big ones) that automate soooo many process in my life. There are umpteen ways to do the things that you need every day. It's amazing how they think of all these ways to connect apps.

All of these tools have saved me countless hours of time and allows my team to track the many processes we use at Dakotah. These tools and many others help me streamline my world. They help us manage elusive 'time' and achieve consistent results for our clients.

Lisa Raehsler

Visual and live interaction with audiences --fans, friends, and clients-- is a way to immediately connect and get real-time feedback. With trends rising in personalization, marketers who can personalize their messages in real-time can gain an advantage over competitors.

Kayla Lewkowicz

Each tool I recommended does slightly different things, but they all contribute to a well-rounded organic strategy. I'm a huge fan of Sprout Social's platform because it's easy to use, I can stay organized, and it has everything I need in one place. I supplement Sprout's great analytics with Google Analytics to help connect the bottom of funnel outcomes (such as sign ups) with top of funnel promotion on social. And with Facebook's algorithm changes, Facebook Live is going to be critical. Mastering on-camera work and video marketing on platforms like Facebook Live is the name of the game for 2018.

Faith Warren

Automation is great, but not if it means your content sounds stale and impersonal. Use tools that enhance productivity, but still leave lots of room for your personality and the 'social' part of social media.

Sathish Arumugam

Let’s start with HootSuite, this is a tool that can help you gather up your various social media profiles under one dashboard, this tool is exceptionally useful if you are trying to coordinate your interactions with influencers across various social media handles.
This tool is a great time saver and I would highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a clutter-free online social experience.

Google Analytics
The next one is Google analytics, this tool is primarily used by website owners and bloggers to keep track of their respective sites organic traffic.
This tool can give accurate reports about the visitors on one’s sites and blogs that can be used for various purposes including AdSense.
This tool can be used to determine the changes needed for increasing the said traffic and this is a big help for new and budding bloggers trying to find a foothold.

Buzzsumo
The last one is Buzzsumo, this website is a great place to know about the current happenings on one’s respective industries, it can give you up to date information about how your competitor is doing and what he is doing, It can also provide you with cool and relevant topics to write on.
Overall these three tools can really help you to play your winning hand at all times and give you an edge over your opponents and business.

Lara Fabans

Postplanner is a great way to regularly post content to Facebook and Twitter. If you don't have something, they do. I can always find a good quote or interesting article for all of the FB pages and twitter handles that I manage. And it's affordable. Facebook Ads allows you to target interests and build up lookalike audiences which means a warmer reception than keywords.
Finally, Google Analytics has come a long way. I can now find out where my people are coming from and optimize language and websites for platforms.

Lauri Stevens

You have to remember I work exclusively with law enforcement. For police, Facebook Live (and any other live video opportunity) is a must to reach key audiences. With the ability to broadcast to exclusive groups along with Facebook's notifications, public safety agencies would be crazy not to use it.

Tweepi is just an easy free app to quickly manage Twitter followers/unfollowers.

Although you have to pay for Social Bro, and cops tends to like FREE tools, it's awesome for monitoring and managing social campaigns.

Brandon Meek

We're using Buzzsumo to help us find influencers and content ideas for the various industries we work with. It allows us to take a very quick look at a topic, evaluate how we want to position our content and get moving.

Right now we're using Slidely Promo in presentations and for ongoing client work. The first time we used one of these in a presentation, it helped us close a $2k/mo. deal. The platform allows us to develop quick concept videos that have a very polished look, without spending hours in editing or searching stock footage. It's been a huge timesaver for our business.

Rebecca Wilkie

Bitly is an under-utilized tool on social media and email marketing. By shortening the URL and having the ability to track the clicks, the program creates valuable analytics on those interacting with your links.

Rob Petersen

We subscribe to Cision and their social media software, Visible Technologies. We have for 2 years. They are my #1 tool because searches are set up around keywords and Boolean search. We think this produces the best results. They have strong social network coverage. Their analytics are well set up by mentions, social channels, media type, content, authors and sentiment. And they have great customer support that is prompt, thorough and a pleasure to work with.

Cision merged with Vocus. They have acquired Visible Technologies, Viral Heat and most recently PR News Wire. So they also seem to be in it to win it for social media monitoring. We've been very satisfied with them.

Chris Lee

A ton of great tools out there, but I love Buffer's and Hootsuite's interface. It's intuitive and makes it really easy to use. BuzzSumo is one of my favorite marketing tools. I use it more for content marketing purposes. It's great for finding the most popular content in social channels, and then seeing exactly who shared it.

Jeffrey Gomez

First, I want to state why I didn’t choose one particular tool as my top: Facebook Live. Facebook Live is still something not many marketers have mastered. Most marketers are looking into FB ads because of their precise targeting whereas Live is something a bit unpredictable. It requires time and really good outreach in order to successfully continue pouring time and effort into it.

For my top tools, you need all three of these: Falcon.io, Google Analytics, and Feedly. A platform to replace the clunkiness of native platforms + scheduling, tracking, and an rss app to get all the latest news.

A tool like Falcon.io is a must for brands and agencies, or really any social media marketer. Falcon.io enables every tool that a social media person may need all in one unified platform. Everything from scheduling to all channels including Instagram, managing incoming mentions and messages, listening to social channels, and of course, analytics. It really could be the only tool you’d ever have to use.

Google Analytics is a must for every marketer. You can use native or 3rd-party platforms to measure social success, but for most brands, the end goal is usually something that’s done outside of social such as a signup, purchase, or download on a site. There’s a full cycle here that needs to be tracked and GA implementation is something that 1) should already be implemented, 2) used in order to create advanced segments of users and 3) track social media goals. If you already include GA inside of Google Tag Manager, you can do advanced things to your Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn retargeting pixels as well.

Finally, you need to continue learning from other marketers. Feedly is the perfect tool to get all your information from different blogs. Dedicate 30 minutes every day reading blogs from other social media marketers !

Carlos Gil

For anyone that’s trying to balance the challenge(s) that managing multiple social media channels offer, you need to use a set of tools to help you cut through the clutter which is why I recommend using Buffer’s pro plan which allows you to schedule and post content across 10 accounts, ManageFlitter to keep your Twitter newsfeed clean by unfollowing accounts which are inactive or don’t follow you back, and Bit.ly to for branded URL’s and analytics.

Robert Moore

Social media marketing/management platforms give me the ability to operate at maximum efficiency, at scale. For me, the three platforms I recommend are the best of breed for their core functions: Multiplatform scheduling and content curation - Sprout; Audience management & building - Crowdfire; Real time engagement - Tweetdeck.

Marina Barayeva

SmarterQueue is the great time saver for scheduling posts for social media. Once you schedule your blog posts, it will publish them over and over automatically. Mix them with other curated content, and your social media feeds will always share valuable content without lots of effort from your side. /n/n Tailwind is the number one solution for Pinterest scheduling. Easy to schedule pins from the Internet, Pinterest or Tailwind will suggest you pins for sharing based on your previous shares. Plus if you get to the Tailwind's tribes you will always have valuable content to share from other bloggers in your niche. /n/n Later is excellent for Instagram scheduling. You can organize your images with the tags, share videos, reply the comments right from the system.

Alejandro Rioja

I like IFTTT to quickly share my content across all my social media platforms. I have it integrated with my Wordpress blog, so that it posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn automatically every time I publish a new blog post. /n/n Facebook Live is great because the reach is much larger than a native post, plus it is a great way for customers or fans to see a side of you and your brand they don't usually get exposed to. /n/n Finally, Google Analytics (with the Search Console integrated) is my go-to whenever I am looking to improve my SEO and traffic. It has all the information I want such as organic queries and CTRs.

Mícheál Brennan

Design Wizard makes it so easy to create visually compelling content and the licensing system is much fairer than its competitors. Video is getting bigger and bigger if you want to get engagement and going live seems to be a way of getting more organic reach on Facebook than traditional posts, especially since their algorithm change. The audience insights within the facebook ads platform are absolutely crucial if you are creating a new strategy.

Claire O’Brien

Design Wizard is amazing, its so easy to create and share images directly to social media or schedule them through Buffer. Without GA I would be operating in the dark, unable to see what my social followers really enjoy away from metrics like likes and clicks,it answers the important question - what do they spend time on! I love the coschedule headline analyzer and challenge myself to get a high scoring caption for social media.

The consensus that can be taken from the answers we received, is that to
dominate social media marketing it’s not about the tools that you use. It’s about mindset. All of
the tools listed are just that, tools. They will not create a marketing strategy for you. They will
not automatically grow your following by clicking one button. They will not create fake engagement
with real people. The tools that our experts recommended can help you in many ways. They can help
you save time, lots of it.

They can help you create stunning visual content that increases engagement. They can help you find
relevant people who might be interested in your content. They can help you get more (or less)
organic reach. In fact, one of the experts that was kind enough to contribute, said that he doesn’t
use tools at all because in his opinion using them can affect organic reach.

“I genuinely prefer just using the platforms directly over and above working through a given
tool. Yes it’s that bit more labour sum but I feel the tools negatively impact the organic
reach of the posts. I know this is contested everywhere but all my experience compliments my
stance.” Jamie White

At the end of the day, whether you agree or disagree with Jamie’s stance, the thing that pretty much
all of experts preached is that the tools can only take you so far, to really have success in social
media marketing, you first need to have the right mindset and one of our other experts really
stressed this:

“Tools are important but the tools won't save you. Too many people are looking for the
magical tool that will skyrocket their social accounts. It doesn't exist. Success on social
is 98% mindset and 2% tools. You need to actually want to dominate. Then you need to be
willing to put in the work to do it. Then you need to realize that you're going to suck at
the start and that's ok. Expect to get zero results at the beginning. Know that the quantity
leads to the quality but until you have quality, nobody is going to follow you. Lebron James
would dominate you in basketball in a bathrobe and flip flops no matter what gear or shoes
you're wearing. Do the right tools make him even better? Absolutely. But wearing Lebron's
shoe doesn't make you Lebron. The tools won't save you. Get your mindset right and just
decide that you're going to dominate social media this year. Once you truly decide, you'll
figure out the how.”Evan Carmicheal

And that same message came across in so many of the other responses we got, from some of the
smartest people in the social media marketing community. If you focus on creating strategies that
engage with your audience, then you will already be more than halfway there. And with the tools that
our experts have recommended, you’ll be able to get there a lot quicker. At the end of the day, the
key to succeeding on social media seems to be the same as the key to succeeding through any other
platform. Good old fashioned marketing strategy!